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Ian Kershaw Quotes

Sir Ian Kershaw, FBA is a British historian and author whose work has chiefly focused on the social history of 20th century Germany. He is regarded by many as one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is particularly noted for his biographies of Hitler.

He was the leading disciple of the late German historian Martin Broszat, and professor at the University of Sheffield. Kershaw has called Broszat an "inspirational mentor" who did much to shape his understanding of National Socialist Germany. Kershaw served as historical adviser on numerous BBC documentaries, notably The Nazis: A Warning from History and War of the Century. He taught a module titled 'Germans against Hitler'.

His wife, Dame Betty Kershaw, was professor of nursing and dean of the School of Nursing Studies at the University of Sheffield.

✵ 29. April 1943
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Ian Kershaw: 9   quotes 0   likes

Famous Ian Kershaw Quotes

“If indeed, as was later alleged, [Hitler] voiced support for the Social Democrats in preference to the Communists, it was presumably viewed as a choice of the lesser of two evils.”

Ian Kershaw

Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 120

“Probably in April of 1919, with the Munich ruled by the Communist Councils, [Hitler] wore, along with almost all the soldiers of the Munich garrison, the revolutionary red armband. That Hitler stood back and took no part whatsoever in the ‘liberation’ of Munich from the Räterepublik is said to have brought him later scornful reproaches from Ernst Röhm.”

Ian Kershaw

Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 120

“German’ socialism came to be wholly associated with the extreme anti-liberal politics of the antisemitic and völkisch movement. The appeal here was mainly to the lower-middle classes—traders, craftsmen, small farmers, lower civil servants—and rooted in a combination of antisemitism, extreme nationalism, and vehement anti-capitalism”

Ian Kershaw

usually interpreted as ‘Jewish’ capitalism
Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 135

“In a pointed remark when defending Esser in 1921 against attacks from within the party, Hitler commented: ‘Everyone was at one time a Social Democrat.”

Ian Kershaw

Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 119

“Not only, then, did Hitler do nothing to assist in the crushing of Munich’s ‘Red Republic’; he was an elected representative of his battalion during this whole period of existence. How to interpret this evidence is, nevertheless, not altogether clear. Since the Munich garrison had firmly backed the revolution since November, and again in April supported the radical move to the Räterepublik, the obvious implication must be that Hitler, in order to have been elected as a soldiers’ representative, voiced in these months the views of the socialist governments he later denounced with every fibre of his body as ‘criminal.”

Ian Kershaw

Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 118

“For Catholics—the other sub-culture which Nazism found greatest difficulty in penetrating, before and after 1933—Hitler was above all seen as the head of a ‘godless’, anti-Christian movement.”

Ian Kershaw

Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 412

“On the nationalist-conservative Right… Hitler was portrayed for the most part as intransigent and irresponsible, a wild and vulgar demagogue, not a statesman, an obstacle to political recovery, the head of an extreme movement with menacing socialistic tendencies.”

Ian Kershaw

Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 412

“Ernst Toller reported that a fellow-prisoner also interned for involvement in the Räterepublik had met Hitler in a Munich barracks during the first months after the revolution, and that the latter had then been calling himself a Social Democrat. Konrad Heiden remarked that, during the time of the Councils Republic, Hitler had, in heated discussions among his comrades, voiced support for the Social Democratic government against the of the Communists.”

Ian Kershaw

Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), pp. 118-119

“The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference.”

Ian Kershaw

As quoted in Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933-45 https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0198219229 (1983), p. 277.

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